The release of a new Dylan album is always met with excitement here in my house. I have been a rather obsessive fan of the Bard from Hibbing since eighth grade when I discovered “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” The way the young, croaky yet clear-throated Dylan sang those repetitive phrases (“it’s a hard, it’s […]

For me, part of writing is finding the right inspiration. Sometimes that inspiration comes in very weird forms. A while ago, my wife, who has been itching to get into Dr. Dog after seeing them open for Wilco in 2007, downloaded their most recent album, Fate. I must say that these are 44 minutes of […]

Okay, for me, Zooey Deschanel‘s version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” from Elf was eye-opening. In her voice I could hear that jazzy/country thing that made me a big fan of Robinella Contreras — subtle shades of Ella Fitzgerald mixed with a little Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn or something! I don’t know. I just […]

Web apps are in. I’ve spoken a bit about them in the past (e.g., in my post about “Fluid”:http://www.heberts.net/~stephen/reviews/app-review-fluid-site-specific-browser-aka-ssb, which, by the way, has seen a lot of development over the past week). Today, I’d like to highlight a music service called “Pandora”:http://pandora.com, which has really altered the way I listen to music over the […]

Now that we’re more than a full day into 2008, I suppose it might be a great time to take a look back at 2007. Here are some personal thoughts that sort of some up the year (NB: I stole this idea a bit from Jon Hicks of hicksdesign). Music By far, the most important […]